Drivers for GeForce 8600M GT on XPS M1530 - Driver Links in Post #1

I have the 8600M GT and I use it with a dual monitor setup. Both the laptop and the external display are 1680x1050. I often watch HD video on one screen while performing other tasks on the other. I also use it for running ubuntu virtually, video editing, and much more. Not much gaming at this point.

Which driver would be best for my situation? Is the 175.97 best for my setup? Also are there ANY drawbacks/risks whatsoever?

 

tyvm forte,

 

Does dell have official drivers for 64 bit?

 

At the moment are you having any issues with the above mentioned things, with the driver you are using currently? If not, just stick with it.

If you have any issues specifically, search around for it and you will have suggestions for drivers or similar So, IMHO, stick with what you've got as long as its working without any problems. Cheers.

 

I haven't exactly had any issues, so I guess I might just take your advice and not change my 156.69 drivers that came from the support page on Dell.com.

However if there is something that is better overall for sure and is officially approved, I wouldn't mind using those drivers.

 

One option if you want to see if something else is better is to go for the Dell drivers, available from their website, for same graphic card, BUT which is not available for this model specifically from their drivers and downloads page. Sometimes dell doesnt update their drivers for some strange reason.

So you could probably go for the 174.31 or 175.97 or 175.19 drivers and see how it is... better still, take a quick look in laptopvideo2go forums to read the posts in the respective drivers thread to have an idea of any issues with these drivers.. cheers.

 

I'm using 177.66 from guru3d.com No problems whatsoever. This is for Vista 64bit

-Jason

 

People,

Can someone tell me if the GPU core temp., is kind of stable between lets say 54-57 or does it keep going up to 64-66 and then coming back down because of the fan???? I mean at idle or minimum activity like browsing in firefox, chatting, HWmonitor running, a little bit of word / excel / coreldraw work???

Or what is it supposed to be in normal conditions?

Because I still don't understand well (and from a tech point of view as well) about how the temp. thing works and whats gets it heated up or when would it be stable?? Thanks a lot....

 

Well, if you're curious you can always monitor your temps with Rivatuner to see how much (if at all) they fluctuate.

Theoretically, if you're not using your GPU (basic tasks you mentioned above), the temps shouldn't change at all for the GPU. It should be fairly thermally isolated from the other components. However, if the cooling in your computer is designed poorly, it's possible the heat from other components could heat up your GPU slightly, although usually it's the other way around because the GPU gets hotter than most of the other components.

From when I used to monitor my temps, I recall that my GPU idled at the same temp without fluctuation until I did something to use my GPU (3DMark, a game, etc).

 

Thank you very much Crash...

I will check with Rivatuner... For me sometimes it stays stable around 56 but then some times it keeps going up and down... have no idea why. And I am not gaming or anything.... anyway, let me see with rivatuner...

Btw, what would be the meaning of this fluctuation, if any???? I mean what does it imply?

 

I would take it to mean that the cooling system in your laptop isn't very good. If your laptop can't maintain a constant idling temperature, then I'd say the cooling is sub-par. Obviously the computer makes up for it by ramping up the fans every now and then to cool it down again, but it shouldn't have to do that to keep it idling at a constant decent temp. I've always heard the M1530 runs hot...

Of course, there could be other reasons. That's just what I think.

 

Ok, thanks a lot crash. I have just gone back to 174.31 driver version (I'd recently tried the 175.97).. Of course I don't know if this has got anything to do with this fluctuations but I just want to see.. Lets see.. I am using rivatuner now to look at the fluctuations.. and I remember before i used to idle at 55-58... don't know if it was something with 175.97.. Anyway, let me try. Will get back laterz with what happens

 

well, no.. its the same with all drivers.. dont know if its because of my display brightness or whatever... anyways, I am too bored to test that out now..

For now back with 174.31... lets see how it.. I was with this before and only recently I went back to 175.97.. so I'll be with 174.31 for a while and see how it is.. BUT, one thing I noticed is with this driver it cools down faster or the temp comes down from 65 to 55 faster, meaning the fan turns off faster than it was with 175.97... Dont know if these are related but this is what I saw... also its idles at 55-57 for a longer time than 175.97

 

Okie dokie.... Now I am running on battery, display brightness at 80% and 174.31... and temp are more stable and in any case they don't fluctuate much or go all the way to 65-66, when the fan kicks in following the A09 BIOS update!! *Dont ask me how or why, I have no idea.*

Next may be I should try with AC plugged in, but instead of having brightness at full, I am gonna try with 90 or 80%. Lets see...

Edit: My temp' are better with the 174.31!!!!! god bless technology!! LOL.. I have absolutely no idea about these things but this is what I am seeing!!! AC plugged in, idling at 55-58, 90% display brightness (before I was in high performance power mode with 100% brightness)!!!

 

Hmm, I'm gonna have to refer back to this post soon. But anyone else showing better temperatures with the 174.31 driver?

 

I remember even before, as soon as the bios updates were released I saw pretty much lower temperatures with this one. and then there were people saying 175.97 gives far lower than 174.31!! And hence I wanted to try out... but as they say, I think these drivers are like 'specific' or something like that.. I dont know..

By the way, all the drivers I tried and the one I am currently using (174.31), are from DELL... Not the ones from laptopvideo2go or the modded inf's....

Edit: And now I am seeing with the Zalman NC2000 - Temp' are even lower by a 3-5 C, and more stable!!!!!!!!!

 

It's pretty close between the two. Haha. Although the 175.97 is the newer version so it should be better. As long as it works why change it?

 

I use 174.16 in Vista 64, 167.58 in XP 64. Any newer drivers stay at 'Low Power 2D' mode for me when on battery.

Can anyone tell me which the stock drivers are? I'd love to use a driver with lower temps.

 

WOW... out of nowhere.. temp' stable at 58

AC Plugged in like I said before, 90% display brightness.. battery charging, firefox, watching youtube videos in full screen, chatting...

Edit: from the time I posted in #165, temp' have been idling on 54-57/58 for the past ~ 3 hrs.. the fan never came on.. normal, basic work as before.. Using 174.31 now and will continue to use this.

PS., though I am not claiming its because of the driver I was seeing the fluctuation - may be or may be not. But those who wanna try, 174.31 is a really nice driver IMHO Everything works well here, at least till now. Cheers.

 

A note - Experts, please correct me if I am wrong!!

I personally recommend people to use the stock drivers from the manufacturer... I remember some time back someone posting around here that the stock drivers tend to behave well, perform well and most importantly report good temperatures... And I have a feeling this might be true... So, as much as possible please see if you can do everything you wanna do in your laptop with the drivers available from the manufacturer, in this case DELL.. if your driver is not listed under your system model or service code, look for it using the search function, because DELL has a tendency to put some drivers in certain laptops only, though they support a graphic card in other systems as well... Cheers People.. This is just my thought!!!

If things completely refuse to work out, of course go for drivers from laptopvideo2go and the modded .inf's!! Still try to see if there is one from Dell which will keep you and your laptop happy and well behaved

 

The drivers provided by manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc) are usually the most stable. All the beta drivers in between releases usually offer better performance but usually at the cost of performance. I used usually way too much in that sentence... haha

 

I think you should bold it in @ Crash... I think these are some valid points / tips / true in a sense, which might escape the eyes of an average reader.. and some newbies probably!!

And yeah, I think so too... I have been playing around with quiet a few now, but I still feel that the 174.31 I got from Dell is really nice... and before I had tried the same from laptopvideo2go but somehow I felt there were some functionality missing.. Like for example, in the display settings, the option to do the smart dimmer thing.... I did not have it when I installed the driver from laptopvideo2go (I don't know if this is the case or if there was something wrong with my comp!!)... But when I took the driver from Dell it was there in the display settings.... and I was pleasantly surprised to see it there.. have no idea how it came there or where did it go all this while.. Anyways...

I am just lost in the world of so much tech and details... its interesting as well as, for me who is still learning so many things, kinda beyond my capacity to understand how they work.. and what do I do??? listen to the experts, follow their tips / guides word-by-word, and move on with my system!! lol...

 

Yea, the thing with video drivers is that unless you're trying to get every last point out of 3DMark you're usually better off sticking with the latest manufacturers driver. Occasionally though, beta drivers will be released in conjunction with a new game to provide better performance in that game. Sometimes they help a lot, other times now. I used to always try out the latest drivers but that got to be a pain after a while so now I just stick to the latest manufacturers drivers and I've had no problems with them.

 

Been doing a bit more experimentation with drivers this morning, going through the XtremeG Mobile 175.63 and finding the laptop stuck in 2D mode over battery + high temps. I went waaaay back to the 156.65... and they work excellent. No modded inf needed, No downclocking, and best of all, idle temps of 56C! Down from the mid-60's! I'm using an m1330 so temperatures are an important consideration.

According to laptopvideo2go, they're not that old, September last year, so I'm gonna stick with these for now until they become a problem.

 

will i'm not a GAMER but i only Play (Pro Evolution Soccer 2008) PES 2008
so i'm going to change my system to Vista 64-bit
i don't know which driver i should download for my 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT ?????
and i have no idea what is 3DMARK??? :$

 

If you use Vista 64-bit you can only use signed drivers. You'd be best off going with the ones provided by Dell.

3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage are synthetic benchmarking programs. Vantage is Vista and DX10 only while 06 runs on all systems. While they're not perfect indicators of performance, they do a pretty good job assessing whether changes to your computer hurt or help 3D performance.

 

Hmm, 56 is pretty good for M1330 that's pretty much on par with M1530 from what I've read. How do you downclock, I'm thinking about taking all the preventative measures for my GPU.

 

Iam running dell driver 174.31, Iam monitoring my temps with "Everest" set to constantly display HD/Core1/Core2/GPU temps in the taskbar. My GPU temp rises to 65,cpu cores to around 50 then the fan kicks in and brings GPU down to 52, cores 39. Fan stops, temps slowly rise, then rinse repeat scenario. Ambient room temp usually around 22,23. These results are from daily desktop use, nothing graphically intensive.

My next purchase is a Cooler Master Notepal Infinite, but Im struggling to find one in stock anywhere.
Im presuming that adding a laptop cooler into the equation will keep my gpu at a reasonable reduced constant temp and reduce the constant cycling of the laptops fan.

 

Where can I find 64 bit dell drivers for geforce 8600m gt? In their driver site I can only find 32bit

 

Anyone?

 

There are no official drivers made or customized by Dell for 64-bit. You will have to download drivers form www.laptopvideo2go.com. Though remember, that the drivers you use are not optimized by Dell as you are forced to use a modified INI so you may get slightly higher temperatures than official Dell drivers.

 

If you download driver from laptopvideo2go that were released by Dell, you don't need modded inf's.

175.80
174.74
174.31

Inside the download will be a zip file containing the original manufacturer .inf files. Copy the nvdm.inf file into the same directory and the driver installer. I prefer to do this rather than laptopvideo2go's own inf files which I find problematic.

 

Just to try it out, I decided to up to v175.97 (official Dell version). It has worse gaming performance with v174.31 and there is quite a bit of lag at high settings.

So you are planning on gaming at high settings, you will want to stick with v174.31 (official Dell version).

 

^I gave 175.80 a go (newest for XP64), and also found inferior performance to 174.31.

 

I think there was a post in laptopvideo2go already regarding this (the last but one post in a v175.97 thread there >> http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19274&view=findpost&p=81871 ).. and this person says something similar.

Note: For people who wanna take drivers from laptopvideo2go, I personally recommend going through the user posts to see about the issues anyone had or to have an insight into how the drivers are behaving, before you download the driver Cheers.

Again I think its better to stick with the drivers released from your manufacturer. I also tried quiet a few drivers and I felt the drivers from your manufacturer are performing better in most cases though they are a bit out dated.. So there.. of course, personal choices may differ and some may work well for some people though Cheers.

 

hi i have installed 175.19 but i donot see any performance difference. my conf is 2.4 ghz 3 gb ram 200 gb 7200 rpm and 256 mb nvidia geforce 8600 gt. dell xps1530. please tell me what and where should i upgrade. currently i am playing assassins creed but it runs with decent fps only at the minimum settings. as soon as i try to reach medium settings it starts slowing up fps and game becomes impossible to play. please help.

thanks
rahul

 

@ Rahul >> Try changing the drivers.. Have you tried with 175.97? or just drop in laptopvideo2go and do a search for assassins creed driver (you can search here too) and see if u hit on some post with some tips.. I would suggest trying with 175.97 or 174.31 or one of the 177.xx versions.

*** Man, you need to update to the 174.93 drivers.
Seriously, they MURDER the 169.09 in performance.
I noticed a 3FPS difference in Assassins Creed, which may not seem like much, but to go from 26FPS to 29FPS, is VERY welcome indeed. ***

*** 174.74 works fine. better than my previous in both wow and assassin`s creed. ps: i can play wow with factory drivers but if i fraps it goes below 20fps, with low detalils. ***

*** Also, you could try 177.35 ***

But first try with the original drivers from Dell.. see if they work... and then go for the others from laptopvideo2go.. Its always recommended to go with Dell drivers first..

 

v175.97 is horrible...... don't use it. It decreases gaming performance significantly.

 

i was going to change it to v175.97 now
buy i guess i will stick with my v174.31 better

 

anyone know any good driver for video watching (Blu-ray, 720p/1080p x264's and xvid files). with the standard driver (which you find on the m1530 driver page) i have no problems but when i try any other driver i get occasional vertical lines. i use the 174.31 which boost my gaming perfomance (pro evolution soccer 2008). i would like one which will give me good performance for both.

 

The beta drivers (read: not official WHQL drivers) generally aim to improve gaming performance and not HD playback quality. The official drivers should offer you the best HD playback.

 

174.31

keeps giving me BSOD

 

i was playing COD4 and the max temp for
ACPI 82 C
GPU 83 C
Core1 76 C
Core2 75 C
HDD 38 C

Is that Bad ???????

 

Are you sure its just this driver version thats giving you BSOD? BSOD can be due to many things.. What were you using before? Are you sure you are seeing this BSOD *only* after you updated to this driver version? Can you please give us more specific details so that someone might be able to help you better Cheers.

 

How long were you playing??

Temp' look good though the GPU looks a bit more than average temp' I have seen being reported around here... But I guess it should be ok.. What are the idle temp' like?

 

COD4 used to give my GPU temps in the 74-76 range for the 1st 4 months I owned the 1530. Now they stay up from 81-87 and will do a quick spike in the 90's. The 8600 is gettin hot!

 

yeah, i never got the bsod before. i forget what version i was on though, 177.something? also, it happened when i was playing cs:source.
The stop error was 0x0A which according to microsoft has these three causes.
• Hardware failure (memory, processor, or motherboard).
• Anti-virus software that is running on your computer.
• Drivers installed by third-party software.

so im thinking its cause the third one? cause im sure its not the 2nd one at least

 

Thanks for the info..

Have you checked if the fan n vents are clean?? Looks like u've owned ur laptop for quiet a while, and it would be nice to give it a look and clean n fans n vents.. also hope u r making sure there is enough ventilation to the base of the laptop..

And you might want to give the laptop coolers a look there are quiet a few available around.. please take a look in cooling central or there is a thread for laptop coolers and even specifically for Zalman nc2000, for example (though I guess u must have seen them by now).

What driver are you using right now?

 

oh yeah, im on 64 bit vista and i was using the 64 bit version of the driver

 

cant someone run pcmark for a bunch of these different drivers and post them here so we can see which give us best performance?